Sure it's summer and it's hot, but... it's PIE and the fruit is fresh so break out the pie plates

MONTREAL - I have one sibling, a sister, her name is Lorraine. When you are two girls in one family, things tend to get competitive and I have always been competitive with Lorraine. I was thinner, Lorraine was prettier. I was the ballerina, Lorraine was the gymnast. I was the fun one, she was the smart one. You get the picture.

As we got older, though, a lot of that currency fell by the wayside, as in neither of us is dancing Swan Lake in the basement anymore or doing back-handsprings on the front lawn. Like it or not, we’re both spending a lot of time covering up the grey. Career-wise, I probably have the more exciting job whereas she, a creative director in a big ad agency, doesn’t so much make the dough as rake it in. And though my sister loves Montreal, she now has the upper hand by living in Paris. I, however, get to spend weekends in the bosky Laurentians, whereas she inhales a heck of a lot of smog on her way to Pierre Hermé to get her breakfast croissants. Or so I keep telling myself.

With so little left for us to compete over anymore, cooking has become an interesting playing field, for we two semi-insane women like to get down and dirty. She makes the world’s best salads, I make the world’s best roast chicken. She sets a mean table, but I choose better wines. She makes superb chili, but I can make the River Café lemon tart without having to get on the phone and make a long-distance call to ask my sister for advice. Ha! As you can see, it’s never-ending.

Last September, on my way back from a trip to Alsace, I stopped by my sister’s apartment for a night before the return flight to Montreal. She held a dinner party in my honour, and when I offered to pick up dessert at a local fab pâtisserie, she said, “No, I made a pear crumble.” I looked at it, sitting there on the counter and scoffed a bit, thinking, “whatever …” It was pale, it was too deep, and she hadn’t asked for my advice, so it was obviously doomed to fail.

Come dessert time, however, my scoffing ceased. Lorraine’s crumble wasn’t just good, it was incredible. I had three portions and practically teared up realizing I couldn’t do better. I sulked my way through the rest of the meal knowing I was beat.

Last week, while planning a dinner I would be having with an Alsatian winemaker, I called sister dearest and asked whether she could share her pear crumble recipe for me to serve with his late-harvest gewürztraminer. “Recipe?” she said. “I don’t have a recipe, I just winged it.” Winged it? My sister made the best damn crumble I have ever tasted and she claims to have winged it? I was furious adding a, “Look Lorraine, it was a pretty good crumble. You can’t just have made it up as you went along. You must have got some guidance somewhere.”

After a bit of prodding she admitted that perhaps the crumble topping had come from a Trish Deseine cookbook (she didn’t mention which one) and that she had added about four apples to the mix with maybe about eight pears, as well as some ginger. “Crystallized or stem?” I asked in a rapid but well-disguised panicky voice. “Beats me,” she answered. The rest, well, she couldn’t remember. If I hadn’t been 10,000 miles away, I seriously would have wrestled her to the living room floor.

Galvanized by the challenge to quash — no, make that destroy — her crumble superiority, I got baking. I consulted crumble recipes from the likes of Maida Heatter, David Lebovitz, Nick Malgieri and Susan Spungen. There was apple/blackberry, there was rhubarb/strawberry there was peach/raspberry, but no there was no pear/apple/ginger. Dang! All the crumbles contained oatmeal but Lorraine’s did not. Mine wouldn’t either. Or would it? I was overthinking this, I kept telling myself, it’s not a croquembouche, it’s just a bloody crumble.

But here’s the thing about crumbles, buckles, crisps, slumps, cobblers, pan dowdies and other such simple fruit desserts: It is because they are so simple that they’re difficult to get right. What dessert is harder to make, an opéra cake or a bowl of vanilla ice cream? The ice cream. Why? Because chances are 50 per cent of your friends have never tasted an opéra cake, but I’ll bet even that man who lived in that tree house in the jungles of Vietnam for 40 years has tasted vanilla ice cream by now. The dishes that are the hardest to make great are the ones we have eaten the most often. It’s that food memory we are always competing with, and I was competing with the memory of my sister’s fluke of a fabulous dessert, which might not even have been as brilliant as I remembered. Could I do it?

Well, I ended up making a crumble, and it actually wasn’t bad at all. Was it as good as Lorraine’s? No. I am positive of that, and I know why: Quebec pears simply cannot compete with French pears. Her crumble oozed pear flavour, yet my crumble tasted more of apples, which is ridiculous considering there were twice as many pears. It’s a shame, but until Canadian pears can compete, my crumble will always tumble when up against French or Italian or Hungarian or Bulgarian pears.

So I’ll give this round to Lorraine. She’s the crumble queen.

But next time I choose the dessert: tarte au sucre.

Score!

Pear and Ginger Crumble

Serves 10

It is crucial for this crumble that the pears be as flavourful as possible, and ripe but not mushy. Look for crystallized ginger sold in bulk in health-food stores like Rachelle-Béry. I like to serve it warm with vanilla ice cream or sweetened whipped cream.

Crumble:

1 cup almond powder

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup sugar

7 tablespoons butter

Pinch salt

1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger

In a mixmaster with the paddle attachment, beat together all the ingredients until it forms a crumbly dough (stop beating once the dough is in beads). Use immediately, or transfer to a bowl and refrigerate for up to 5 days.

Peel the pears with a potato peeler, slice them in half, and with a melon baller, scoop out the cores, seeds and any fibrous parts. Slice into 1-inch cubes, place into a bowl and toss with the citrus juice. Repeat the operation with the apples, adding them into the pear mix. Add the sugar, the zest, ginger and salt, and using your hands or a large spoon, toss until the sugar and ginger are well distributed throughout. Pour the fruit mix into the pan and spread well into the corners. Pour over the crumble mixture, being sure you get it right into the corners in an even layer. Place the crumble into the hot oven and cover loosely with a layer of tin foil (do not seal the sides or the crumble will not crisp up properly). Bake for 1 hour, checking it at the 45-minute mark and removing the foil so the crisp will brown. After one hour, the juices along the sides, and almost to the middle, must be boiling. If not, continue baking for 10-minute increments, watching to be sure the crumble does not get too dark. It should be a deep golden brown but not burnt. Serve hot or at room temperature, but let cool at least 10 minutes before serving.

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